Lindsay Gibson (University of British Columbia) and James Miles (University of Alberta) recently wrote an article for The Conversation outlining five ways that teachers can respond to residential school denialism in the classroom. The authors discuss the five Ds—detect, debunk, disregard, debate, and deconstruct—and how each of these can help educators to play a key role in advancing truth and reconciliation. They explain that these five Ds offer different response options, and that teachers should consider contextual cues such as the type of denialism they are encountering, the students involved, and their broader school and community context when deciding on their response. “If students are expected to respond effectively to residential school denialism, they need to learn the truth about what happened in residential schools, but also how to distinguish legitimate historical disagreement from misleading attempts to deny and distort that history,” conclude Gibson and Miles.
